A 2011-2012 survey of 60 permanent plots across six dune stages spanning up to 2 million years of soil development in the Southwest Australian biodiversity hotspot. The dataset, accompanying a 2015 Nature Plants paper, includes floristic surveys and soil chemical analyses from 420 subplots. It was collected by researchers and published via the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network's Data Discovery portal.
Use Cases
- Modeling shifts in plant nutrient-acquisition strategies based on soil age and chemistry.
- Investigating the relationship between soil phosphorus/nitrogen levels and plant community composition.
- Analyzing the effect of soil pH and development stage on local plant species diversity.
Strengths
- Dataset accompanies a peer-reviewed paper in Nature Plants, suggesting scientific rigor.
- Uses a stratified design with 60 plots and 420 subplots, providing structured spatial sampling.
- Includes both flora (species counts, canopy cover) and soil (phosphorus, nitrogen, carbon, pH) data for integrated analysis.
Limitations
- Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
Provenance
- Source
- Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network's Data Discovery
- Collection Method
- Randomised stratified design with floristic surveys and soil sample collection from subplots.
- Time Range
- 2011-2012
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-06-10 19:16:41.262568; freshness should be verified.
- Geography
- Jurien Bay dune chronosequence, Southwest Australian biodiversity hotspot